In case there were any doubt, there's proof that Muslims are being persecuted in the US. Obviously, there's a significant percentage of US citizens who don't have a problem with this, including some in the law enforcement community, or they wouldn't have come up with policies like this.

The LAPD planned to have its counterterrorism bureau identify Muslim enclaves to determine which might be likely to become isolated and susceptible to "violent, ideologically based extremism."

To the LAPD's credit, they shelved the idea once they were browbeaten by Muslim groups and the ACLU, though I doubt they went along willingly. I'm willing to bet that there was a lawsuit threat or two thrown around and the LAPD knew they couldn't win in the long run.

The thing is, while there's a major threat of Muslim extremism in the world, there's not so much of one here in the US. In fact, the majority of the terrorism cases involving US Muslims so far have involved, well, idiots who couldn't find their asses without both hands, a road map, and an undercover FBI agent leading them to said asses while suggesting they swear an oath of allegiance to Bin Laden and al Qaeda.

But if you want extreme religious groups who've done real damage and who continue to pose a threat to the health and safety of the American public, well, here's a good place to start. I mean, if you think profiling is an effective law enforcement tool (I don't--it creates resentment in the profiled community and gathers up way more innocent people than criminals it captures), then start profiling extremist Christian anti-abortion groups who celebrate murderers and bombers. Try to infiltrate their groups and discover where they plan on striking next.

As far as the original plan is concerned, the LAPD says its dead, and that it wasn't a big deal anyway, that it was in fact a good thing they were trying to do.

Downing and other city officials had defended the plan, saying the idea was to deepen ties with Muslim communities. The plan would have had data assembled by the University of Southern California's Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events.

Just a suggestion--if you want to deepen ties with a community, how about you start by doing anything other than suggesting that you think they're a major risk for breeding extremism when there's no local reason to assume so.